Since the beginning of September, the Orange distributor has seen its number of new account enquiries treble and has more than doubled the number of dealers it would actually expect to sign up over the same period.
"There are many nervous dealers out there at the moment," said Hollinshead. "The introduction of ongoing revenue earlier this year means that dealers have much more of their long term earnings tied up with their distributor and they don't want to see it disappear overnight. As a result, many dealers are looking for a safe pair of hands and Mainline fits easily into that category."
The distributor's high profile £1 million Dealer Development Fund, combined with its market leading commercial terms and business support activities, have helped in attracting new business enquiries, but Mainline has maintained its rigorous criteria for taking on new dealers, which is why the proportion of dealers actually signed up is significantly less than the number of enquiries received.
"We only want to work with dealers who we feel can provide good numbers of quality connections over the long term," says Hollinshead. "By doing so, we can invest in helping them, confident that our relationship with them will be of mutual benefit. It's a philosophy that some of our competitors would have done well to follow - both for their benefit and that of their dealers."